How am I entitled? Let me count the ways …

I was extremely tempted to write today about dear old retiring U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and about how he is nearly equal to John Kerry, as far as making stupid statements whenever he opens his mouth goes. However, I am instead going to finish up my train of thought on the Entitlement Myth, unless I am unusually bugged about something down the road.

I am going to make this rather short, as I am, to be honest, tired of the topic, although it would be possible to go on and on and on…

People can develop a sense of entitlement from many things; by no means exhaustive (or even accurate), here’s a few:

Society: As I’ve already written, the “give a man a fish” approach creates both a dependency on the hand-out society and a worldview in which this is proper; most humans need to provide a justification for things that are against their nature (as I believe entitlement thinking is), and use the appeal of authority (“The government knows what is best”) or some other invalid premise (“they want you to have it”).

Slothfullnes: One of the 7 deadly sins (if I recall correctly), this speaks for itself.

Handicap status: The “minority” thinking: “I don’t have an equal opportunity, so therefore I deserve _________ .” There may be, in rare instances, some truth to this premise; however, the next step, an attitude of entitlement, is not the right conclusion.

Bad Theology: This one really bugs me. There are sub-sets to this one, including various forms of “faith” teachings, including the “Latter Rain” heresy, the various prosperity heresies, and a lot of the “prophetic” stuff. All of these could be cured by turning off “Christian” TV, unsubscribing from prophecy mailing lists, and simply reading the Bible.

Egotism: According to Chuck Gallozzi, “Egotism is the glue with which people get stuck on themselves.” This is simply being selfish, thinking we are higher than we really are. However, a mild and extremely common form (shared by nearly everyone at various times) is thinking that by nature of our own efforts, we deserve a certain benefit.

I deal with this one all of the time, especially when it comes to my free time. I seem to think that I deserve peace and quiet, a place to rest from my labors, and some respect. This, of course, speaks for itself.

So, there you have it. Entitlement in many forms. All contrary to the Bible, as far as I can see. But, it’s a national pastime. Go figure.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 8:40 pmand is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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